Read Online Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden - Free Book Online Page B

noise from the direction of the front entrance hall, and soon the two women came drifting out onto the walkway. I didn’t dare look at them. But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees.
    “Umeko-san!” Auntie shouted—for this was the name of the cook. “Bring tea for Granny.”
    “I don’t want tea,” I heard an angry voice say.
    “Now, Granny,” said a raspier voice, which I took to be Mother’s. “You don’t have to drink it. Auntie only wants to be sure you’re comfortable.”
    “There’s no being comfortable with these bones of mine,” the old woman grumbled. I heard her take in a breath to say something more, but Auntie interrupted.
    “This is the new girl, Mother,” she said, and gave me a little shove, which I took as a signal to bow. I got onto my knees and bowed so low, I could smell the musty air wafting from beneath the foundation. Then I heard Mother’s voice again.
    “Get up and come closer. I want to have a look at you.”
    I felt certain she was going to say something more to me after I’d approached her, but instead she took from her obi, where she kept it tucked, a pipe with a metal bowl and a long stem made of bamboo. She set it down beside her on the walkway and then brought from the pocket of her sleeve a drawstring bag of silk, from which she removed a big pinch of tobacco. She packed the tobacco with her little finger, stained the burnt orange color of a roasted yam, and then put the pipe into her mouth and lit it with a match from a tiny metal box.
    Now she took a close look at me for the first time, puffing on her pipe while the old woman beside her sighed. I didn’t feel I could look at Mother directly, but I had the impression of smoke seeping out of her face like steam from a crack in the earth. I was so curious about her that my eyes took on a life of their own and began to dart about. The more I saw of her, the more fascinated I became. Her kimono was yellow, with willowy branches bearing lovely green and orange leaves; it was made of silk gauze as delicate as a spider’s web. Her obi was every bit as astonishing to me. It was a lovely gauzy texture too, but heavier-looking, in russet and brown with gold threads woven through. The more I looked at her clothing, the less I was aware of standing there on that dirt corridor, or of wondering what had become of my sister—and my mother and father—and what would become of me. Every detail of this woman’s kimono was enough to make me forget myself. And then I came upon a rude shock: for there above the collar of her elegant kimono was a face so mismatched to the clothing that it was as though I’d been patting a cat’s body only to discover that it had a bulldog’s head. She was a hideous-looking woman, though much younger than Auntie, which I hadn’t expected. It turned out that Mother was actually Auntie’s younger sister—though they called each other “Mother” and “Auntie,” just as everyone else in the okiya did. Actually they weren’t really sisters in the way Satsu and I were. They hadn’t been born into the same family; but Granny had adopted them both.
    I was so dazed as I stood there, with so many thoughts running through my mind, that I ended up doing the very thing Auntie had told me not to do. I looked straight into Mother’s eyes. When I did she took the pipe from her mouth, which caused her jaw to fall open like a trapdoor. And even though I knew I should at all costs look down again, her peculiar eyes were so shocking to me in their ugliness that I could do nothing but stand there staring at them. Instead of being white and clear, the whites of her eyes had a hideous yellow cast, and made me think at once of a toilet into which someone had just urinated. They were rimmed with the raw lip of her